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About a decade ago, The Wall Street Journal posted a short video about Itsushi Hamasaki, a diffident and rather nondescript man living in Tokyo. To free up money for his loudspeakers—a pair of hulking horns costing north of $100,000—Hamasaki lives in a 250 ft² apartment and hasn't bought a stitch of clothing in 15 years.

While the tale of Jimmy Scott's return from obscurity sounds apocryphal, it is surely one of popular music's happier endings. After years of being out of music , Scott's reemergence began in flamboyant fashion when he sang at the 1991 funeral of revered songwriter Doc Pomus.

Every product listed here has been reviewed in Stereophile. Everything on the list, regardless of rating, is genuinely recommendable. Within each category, products are listed by class; within each class, they're in alphabetical order, followed by price, a review synopsis, and a note indicating the issues in which the review and any subsequent follow-up reports appeared.

Since you're reading Stereophile, it's likely that you and music have an intense and (hopefully) steadfast relationship. Perhaps it dates from your formative years, or perhaps you and music found each other during a difficult or transitional life phase. Whatever the case, you found music—or music found you.

I sometimes lament how much technological know-how is required for a consumer to successfully navigate the world of high end audio. Why do we have to wade through all this engineering mumbo jumbo just to enjoy great sound?

I'm far too disorganized to have kept an accurate count, but I'm pretty sure that at this point in my life I have installed or adjusted well over 5000 phono cartridges. These days I work on three or four turntables in a typical week and have been doing that consistently for the last 40 years.

Music often brings me joy, awe, and, if I'm lucky, something close to transcendence, but it's not my only route there. A few years ago, on a sunny January day in Madrid's Prado museum, I went looking for Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights.